When the Dust Settles
Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster
Lucy Easthope
Having read it
★★★★☆
Life-affirming in its honesty and humility, with mention of some personal events – her wedding is perfect: ideal and meaningful – and tough events that sit alongside some notable disasters; a livelihood that has made seriously good efforts (by the author and her colleagues and associates) to learn, adapt and develop disaster response in the UK and across the world, until austerity and even more bean-counting, managerialism and spreadsheetitis (and an obsession with systemic binaries) came in and sucked the life out of effective responses and genuine community involvement in a future after disaster.
Anyway, it all makes for a surprisingly light and readable tale that is balanced well with humour (and poor tea making skills!) to lighten the load of reality and show that good things (can and do) happen despite the bad and unexpected.
A good passage
But disasters are about total loss. Tangible losses: of a person, a house, a place. And intangible losses: of a feeling of safety, trust in authority. And then the terrible mourning for the life before. The best way to describe it is a word originating in Wales: hiraeth. The first time I heard the word was from those speaking and writing about the tragedy at the Welsh village of Aberfan, a terrible disaster that killed 144 people. In October 1966, a colliery spoil tip crashed onto the school and houses below. One hundred and sixteen of the dead were children. Hiraeth is a longing for a place to which there is no return, an echo of something that can never be found, a heartsickness for something that no longer exists and a time that can never be gone back to.
A second good passage
A memorial has limited utility. It acts as totemic reminder, yes, and as a place to provoke thought and contemplation. It has historical significance. But Lac-Mégantic [Quebec, Canada] taught me that perhaps the greater honour for those who died is to live for them.
To keep their stories alive by including them in yours.